


Prom Night

by sashimiprince



Category: To the Moon Series (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, High School, Prom, To The Moon, featuring my random headcanon that eva played tennis in high school, finding paradise, imposter factory, impostor factory, rosawatts, this is just self indulgent childhood rosawatts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27584453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sashimiprince/pseuds/sashimiprince
Summary: Eva, Neil, Roxie and Robert reflect on their high school proms.
Relationships: Eva Rosalene/Neil Watts
Kudos: 6





	Prom Night

“So he’s the one on the far left-- his date’s the one in the long pink dress.”

Neil overheard this conversation as he was coming back from the workroom to grab a cup of coffee and as he was headed back to his office. He saw Eva standing outside her office with Roxie, who was showing her something on her phone. She had a huge smile on her face, and Eva had a smaller, but still interested, smile on hers. 

Neil began walking towards them to see what was going on.

“Hey, guys,” he said, stopping only a few feet in front of where they were standing, “what’s up with the phone?”

“Roxie’s showing me some photos of her brother’s prom,” Eva answered.

“He looks so nice! All dressed up… he’s like an adult now…” Roxie accentuated her sentences with sniffles that Neil couldn’t quite tell from real or fake.

“You have a brother that’s high school aged? I thought you were like… forty,” Neil said, which earned a slap on the arm from Roxie.

“Ow!” Neil said.

“I’m only twenty-four, you jerk,” Roxie said, crossing her arms across her chest. “Now you don’t get to see the photos of Sam.”

“Who’s Sam?” Neil asked.

“My _brother!”_ Roxie responded, apparently hurt that Neil didn’t know her brother’s name. “You know what, now you can’t see the photos of him anymore. I’ve revoked your right.”

Neil lifted the one hand that wasn’t holding a mug of coffee over his heart. “Oh no, Rox, I’ve been wounded. You hit me right where it hurts,” he said in the driest voice he could muster. Roxie rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to her phone, which Eva was still looking at.

“That girl in the middle there,” Eva said, lifting up her finger and pointing to a girl with a long navy blue dress on. “She kinda reminds me of what I wore at my prom.”

Neil leaned in to see the photo, ignoring Roxie’s declaration a few seconds before. She was right-- the dress was fairly similar to the deep blue dress Eva had worn to their prom.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Neil responded.

Eva leaned back with a small smile on her face. “That was pretty fun, wasn’t it, Neil?”

“Wait, you two went to prom together?” Roxie asked with a smile on her face.

“Oh, no, actually,” Eva was quick to correct. “I went with someone else-- just this guy in my homeroom class.”

“Oooh, tell me about it!” Roxie said, turning off her phone and placing it in her pocket to turn all of her attention on Eva.

“We really don’t have time for this, do we?” Neil asked. “I mean, there’s paperwork, machine adjustments, writing new code…”

“Nope, nope, and nope!” Roxie responded cheerfully. “I finished all my paperwork, my machine is fully calibrated, and there’s no new code I need to work on. And besides, what are you so busy working on, Dr. Watts? Another little game for Eva?”

Neil felt his cheeks tinge slightly pink. “I do actual work at this company, too, you know.”

“Mmm. You have time to listen to and tell some prom stories, then,” Roxie stated.

“If you’re so curious about our prom stories, why don’t you go first?” Neil said, trying to deflect and get out of telling prom stories as quick as possible. “It’s only fair.”

“Okay!” Roxie responded quickly. Neil was slightly taken aback by how eager she was to share her story, but it was too late for him now to simply walk away from the conversation. He had to stay and hear whatever people wanted to say-- and most likely, share his own story too.

Neil took a sip of his coffee and prepared to be standing in that hallway for a while.

“So, it all started when we were driving to prom…”

* * *

“Hey, can we stop at McDonald’s or something?” Roxie asked from the passenger seat of her friend’s car. “I really want one of their Oreo milkshakes.” Rebecca’s dad had let them take his nice car out to prom, and she and her two other friends crammed into it, dressed in elegant dresses and full faces of makeup.

Rebecca, who was currently driving the car, laughed. “We’re already showing up late to prom, you really want to stop to get McDonald’s right now?”

“What can I say,” Roxie said, leaning back in her seat. “You can’t help when you get struck by that ice-cream craving. But you can _appease_ it by getting yourself some when it happens.”

“She’s got a point,” Zoe in the backseat said.

“Yeah!” Kiera agreed, and she immediately high fived with Zoe.

“The people have spoken,” Roxie said, glancing at Rebecca. Rebecca shot her a side-eye, but couldn’t help but smile as she changed the car’s direction from their high school to the closest McDonald’s they could get to.

Twenty minutes later and four milkshakes later, the friends parked their car at their high school and began walking up to the doors. They knocked on the doors and waited a few minutes for a disgruntled teacher to walk outside and yell at them for being so late, but eventually let them in anyway.

They walked in, laughing and giggling, Roxie’s lipstick slightly smudged from the milkshake straw but not caring. They got on the dancefloor and danced to every old 80s song that played, sang along loudly to every current song on the radio, and stood near the wall and made fun of all the couples that were swaying together during the slow songs.

However, this didn’t last very long. Roxie and her friends started to hear some commotion from the opposite side of the gym, and when they looked over they saw two people fighting each other-- not a simple verbal altercation, but actual fists were being swung and one of the two ended up on the floor. More people started joining in by the second until it was a giant group of people that looked like they were just trying to hit whoever was nearby.

“Oh my god,” Roxie said, looking over at them, as Rebecca, Zoe, and Kiera watched along with her.

Teachers began getting involved in trying to break up the fight, but soon enough even that wasn’t one of the biggest issues they had to deal with. One of the sparkly lights the school had strung up started malfunctioning and sparked, which caught onto one of the tablecloths set up around the room. The spark quickly grew and turned into a full on fire, which caused even the people fighting to pause and look at what was happening.

“Woah!” Rebecca yelled as the fire started to consume the whole table and threatened to spread even further.

“Okay, I think that’s our cue,” Roxie said, grabbing Rebecca, Zoe, and Kiera and heading towards the doors on the side of the room most other people were leaving through. They began to speed-walk back to the car, only about 45 minutes after they had arrived, and quickly got in and shut the doors, only taking that moment to fully comprehend what just happened. The four of them sat in the car, silently, as they began to hear the sirens of a fire truck approaching the school.

“Well,” Roxie said, sighing and leaning back in her seat and turning to face the rest of the people in the car. “Ice cream, anyone?”

* * *

Neil and Eva stared at Roxie silently with open mouths.

“...What?” Roxie asked after a moment.

“What do you mean _what?”_ Neil responded. “You just told us that your prom involved a twenty person fist fight and then the gym caught on fire!” 

“And this is somehow the first time we’re hearing about this!” Eva added.

“Ah, right, well,” Roxie said, tapping one of her fingers against her chin. “It’s not something that exactly comes up naturally in a normal conversation.”

“I… I guess?” Neil said.

“Well, I can promise you no one’s story is going to be anywhere near as interesting as yours,” Eva said. “As far as I’m aware, most people’s proms don’t involve people punching each other and something catching on fire.”

“Well, the rest of the night was a bit more calm. We just watched cheesy rom coms on Rebecca’s couch and ate gallons of ice cream. But you’re still not getting out of telling me your stories!” Roxie said with a smile. “Spill!”

Eva looked towards Neil.

“I’m not going first,” he said quickly. Eva rolled her eyes.

“Alright, fine,” Eva said. “It’s not that interesting, but since you want to hear it so bad…”

* * *

“I’m so sick of everyone talking about prom all the time,” Neil said, slumping into his seat. “It can’t possibly be that interesting. You show up, you dance for three hours, eat lukewarm food, and then you go home and your feet hurt.”

Eva glanced up from where she was getting ahead on some of her homework to look at Neil, who was sitting next to her in their homeroom class.

“You’re always so cynical, Neil,” she said, drawing an arrow to the mitochondria of the cell and labelling it as such.

“I mean, you agree with me, right?” he said. 

“I dunno. I guess it just depends.” She glanced up at him from her work. “Do you have a red colored pencil? I need to shade this in.”

“Depends on what?” Neil asked, completely ignoring her question about a red colored pencil. She rolled her eyes and began digging into the depths of her backpack to look for a pencil that had possibly rolled out of her case and been forgotten about.

“I _mean_ it depends,” Eva said, still leaned over into her bookbag. “Sure, the way you described it doesn’t make it sound _fantastic,_ but prom’s not just food and dancing. It’s also about the people you’re there with.”

Neil gave her a small look as Eva leaned up from her backpack and grabbed a pink colored pencil from her pencil case, deciding that it would be close enough.

“You mean like a date?” he asked.

“Sure. I guess. But you could also just go with friends and have a good time.”

“...So you actually want to go to prom?”

Eva looked over and raised an eyebrow at Neil, slightly confused by why he was so focused on the idea of prom, but didn’t ask him about it. “Yeah. We’re in our senior year of high school, I might as well. 

I’d rather look back on an average prom experience than wonder about a missed opportunity.” 

Neil looked at her for a moment, absorbing the information.

“Well--” Neil started to say, before he was cut off by someone walking up to Eva’s desk to begin talking to her.

“Hey, Eva,” Avery Martins, a kid in their grade, said. Both Eva and Neil turned to look at him. Avery was smiling, but he looked quite nervous. He had both of his hands in his pockets and had difficulty keeping Eva’s gaze.

“I was, uh… look, I don’t know if you already have a, uh…” He looked over at Neil. Neil stared at him back, confused by the kid’s stuttering. Eva kept looking at Avery, though, with a smile and waited for him to finish.

“Ah, I guess I’ll just get it over with-- do you want to be my date for prom?” he asked. He had a crooked smile that Eva actually found rather endearing, and he took one of his hands out of his pockets to awkwardly rub his neck. Neil glanced between Avery and Eva, genuinely surprised by the conversation.

“Oh, uh…” Eva stuttered, also caught off guard by the conversation. She felt herself start to blush and began to smile. “Sure!” she answered. Neil’s eyes widened, but she didn’t notice. She was looking at  
Avery, who began to smile at her response.

“Oh, great!” he said, letting out his anxious sigh. “So, I guess we should get each other's numbers, right? So I can text you about meeting you and stuff like that…”

Eva pulled out her phone to get Avery’s number and Avery did the same. Neil began pulling out some of his homework for his classes and started working silently.

* * *

“Avery wasn’t that great anyway,” Neil said. “He sat next to me in bio, and he asked me for a pencil every day. _Every. Single. Day._ At that point, just go buy a pack of pencils! It’s not that hard!”

“I remember you forgetting a pencil almost every day,” Eva said. “You always bothered me for one in class.”

“Well, my forgetfulness was endearing,” Neil said. “His was just annoying.”

Eva rolled her eyes. “He was sweet and he wanted to take me out to prom. I wasn’t exactly thinking about his pencil-asking tendencies.”

“Obviously,” Neil retorted. “Besides, what kind of a name is Avery anyway? Avery,” he repeated, slower and in a weird voice. 

“It’s a normal name,” Eva responded.

“Yeah, what’s your issue with Averys?” Roxie asked. 

Neil tapped his foot and crossed his arms. “Just a bad name.”

Eva glanced at Neil, but shook her head. “Anyway… the actual prom experience was pretty nice. Normal. I bought a long dark blue dress, got my makeup done, he picked me up and we slow danced to a few songs, then he dropped me off and kissed me outside my door.” She shrugged. “We never officially dated or anything, but he was certainly a sweet kid.”

“You wouldn’t think that if he asked you for a pencil every day,” Neil said quietly.

“Well, that sounds really nice!” Roxie said. “I bet you looked really pretty.”

“Aww, thanks, Rox,” Eva said. “I remember my sister doing my hair and makeup for what felt like hours… I better have looked nice.”

Roxie chuckled and then looked over at Neil. “So, what was Neil doing at this time?” she asked. “Holing himself up at his house?”

Neil lowered his eyes at her. “How much of a loser do you think I am?” he asked, slightly offended. “I went to prom too.”

“Oh, well, Eva was just saying how you were constantly complaining about it.”

“I mean, yeah, I did… but I still went.”

“Yeah, I basically had to force him to ask out this girl he had a _huge_ crush on,” Eva said. “Her name was Rosalyn, she was in a ton of our classes, and I found a secret corsage in his backpack he was gonna ask her out with…”

_“Alright!”_ Neil interjected, beginning to blush. “We really don’t need to talk about this.”

“Talk about what?” a voice from behind him said. Neil turned around and immediately slumped when he saw Rob walking towards them.

_“Nothing,”_ he said quickly.

“Neil was just about to tell us about his high school prom!” Roxie explained. Neil whipped around and gave her a look, but she ignored him.

“Hm…” Rob said, stopping where the three of them were standing. “Normally I’d tell you all to get back to work, but I’m actually rather curious to hear this.”

“So you’re blackmailing me into telling you my high school prom story?” Neil asked.

“I mean, I could just write you up now, if you’d prefer,” Rob responded. Neil rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.

“This is why everyone hates you,” Neil said under his breath.

“What?” Rob asked.

“I said _fine,”_ Neil sighed, leaning his head back dramatically. “I’ll tell you weirdos the fantastic and magical story of my prom.”

“That’s what I thought,” Rob said.

* * *

Neil looked over to Eva, who had quickly returned to her homework after just being asked out by Avery Martins and exchanging phone numbers with him. He tried to focus on his math homework, but after every question his eyes kept wandering over to Eva, who had a small smile on her face the whole time she was working.

“Did you just say yes to going to prom with Avery Martins?” Neil asked. Eva turned to him with a confused look on her face.

“Yes?” she asked after a moment. “What are you confused about?”

“I’m confused about the part where you’re going to prom with _Avery Martins._ Like, as a date. Not just friends-- he asked you as a _date.”_

“He sure did,” Eva responded simply.

“What happened to just going with a group of friends?”

“It’s not like I’ll be ignoring my friends all night. And you’re sitting here complaining about prom-- you’re probably not even gonna go,” Eva said. “So why does it matter to you so much?”

Neil didn’t respond. Eva continued her biology homework of coloring and labelling different parts of a cell and started digging through her bag again.

“God, now I’m out of green colored pencils, what…” she said, talking to herself, before trailing off and looking at Neil. “Neil, have you been stealing my colored pencils?”

_“What?”_ Neil said, slowly and definitely suspiciously. “I have done no such thing.”

“Neil.”

“Well, I haven’t done anything you can prove.”

_“Neil.”_

“Fine! My goodness,” Neil said, picking up his backpack and beginning to look through it for his pencil case. “You have so many of them. Didn’t think it’d matter if I took one or two.”

“It matters when you take all of my reds and all of my greens.”

Neil rolled his eyes and grabbed his pencil case from his bag, holding it over to Eva without looking at her. He stayed like that for a moment, slowly getting confused as to why Eva wasn’t taking it. He looked over to her where she was intently staring at his bag.

“Wh--” he began to ask, before Eva pointed inside his bag and interrupted him.

“What is that?” she said, pointing to a clear plastic container. Before Neil had a chance to respond, Eva took it out of the bag and began examining it.

“Hey!” Neil protested, but Eva had already grabbed it. It was a small plastic box wrapped with a small piece of twine twisted into a bow. Inside, a small bouquet of large red and small white flowers were tied together onto a lacy band.

“You have a _corsage?”_ Eva asked, a large smile on her face. Neil quickly leaned over in his seat and snatched the box from her hands and put it back in his bag, zipping it up. 

“Why can you never stay out of my business?” Neil asked. He felt his face turning red.

Eva ignored his question. “Oh my god, you _are_ planning to go to prom! And you were gonna ask someone out, too! Who is it?”

Neil turned an even deeper shade of red. “I, uh…”

“Is it Rosalyn?” Eva immediately guessed.

“W-what? No!” Neil stuttered. “Stop asking me. It’s no one. I’m not asking anybody out. Finish your homework.”

* * *

“Wait, who’s Rosalyn?” Roxie interrupted. “I’ve never heard you talk about her.”

“She was a girl I went to high school with,” Neil said dryly. “It’s not weird I’ve never talked about her. I think it’d be weirder if I _did_ talk about her all the time.”

“You talk about Eva all the time,” Roxie said.

“She’s my coworker! Who I see every day!” Neil said defensively.

“Rosalyn was a girl at our high school who played on the tennis team,” Eva answered, turning towards Roxie. “We played together in high school and Neil would come to all of our games-- just to see her, I bet.”

Neil’s face started to turn slightly pink. “I was _there_ to _support_ a _friend.”_

“Mhmm,” Eva said, giving Neil a side look that showed she didn’t believe him at all. “She was also in a lot of our classes. And Neil had a _huge_ crush on her. Like, colossal. I mean, he stared at her all the time. Rosalyn and I were deskmates in biology, and he spent the whole class looking at her-- I have no idea how he passed that class.”

“Can I get back to my story now?” Neil said quickly.

* * *

“Oh my god, it is Rosalyn!” Eva said excitedly. Neil quickly put his finger over his mouth and shushed her.

“Would you be quiet?” Neil said. “I don’t need every class on this hallway knowing my business.”

“Ooh, that means you _do_ have a crush on Rosalyn,” Eva said with a smile, but slightly quieter this time to appease Neil.

“It, uh, I…” Neil looked at Eva, who was still looking at him with a smile, and nervously glanced at his desk. “Y-yeah, sure,” he eventually answered.

Eva gasped in excitement. “You _have_ to ask her out,” she said. “And then we can both go to prom with dates! Wouldn’t that be cool?”

Neil glanced back up to look at Eva again. “...Yeah, it would.”

“Good, then it’s decided!” Eva said.

Neil paused and watched her with a wary expression. “Wait, what’s decided?”

“You’re gonna ask Rosalyn out today!”

Neil froze.

“Wait, _what?”_ he asked nervously. “No I’m not! I’m not asking her out!”

“Yes, you are,” Eva said. “She and I have tennis practice after school. Drop by and ask her then! It’ll be so cute!”

“I can promise you it won’t be!”

“What are you so nervous about, Neil?” Eva asked. “That she’ll say no?”

Neil pursed his lips together.

“She’s not going to say no, Neil. You’re a sweet guy.”

Before Neil could respond, the bell for homeroom rang and everyone else began packing up and heading for the door.

“Wow, saved by the bell, literally,” Neil said, quickly grabbing his backpack and standing up out of his seat. “See you later, Eva, let’s never talk about this again, bye!”

“Wait, Neil!” Eva called after him, still in her seat.

“I can’t hear you, I’m going to class!”

“Your class is the other way, moron!”

“It’s a shortcut!” Neil yelled from the hallway, then quickly walking away from the door to avoid Eva’s further comments.

* * *

“Wait, one more question,” Roxie said.

Neil rolled his eyes. “We’re gonna be here for five hours if you don’t just let me hurry up and finish what I’m saying.”

“Why did you already have a corsage?” Roxie asked. “It sounds like Eva had just convinced you to ask out Rosalyn _that day.”_

“I think the word you’re looking for is forced, not convinced,” Neil responded.

Eva scrunched her eyebrows in at Roxie’s comment. “Oh, yeah, I guess I never thought about that.”

“So what’s up with that, Neil?” Roxie asked, staring right at him. Neil could see the faintest hint of a sly smile on her lips.

“There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for that,” Neil said.

“Do tell,” Roxie responded.

“My grandpa was pushing me to ask a girl out to prom and he gave me a corsage to do so,” Neil said. “Pretty old fashioned, but so was he, I guess. I carried it around in my backpack just to appease him-- I wasn’t _really_ planning on using it.”

Roxie narrowed her eyes at him. “Right.”

“Just let me finish my story and stop with the inquisition!”

* * *

Neil was holding the corsage box in front of him with both hands, grasping it nervously and so tight that the box was actually starting to bend in some places. He was watching the tennis courts intently from where he was standing on the school pavement, about a few hundred feet away.

“I can’t ask her out,” Neil said, turning to Eva, who was right beside him. She was dressed up in her tennis uniform, holding a racquet, and was glaring at Neil.

“Can I please just do this later? Or better yet, never?” Neil continued. Eva hit his arm with the tennis racquet in her hand.

“Ow!” he said. “That actually hurt!”

“Shut up, you wimp,” Eva said, rolling her eyes. “Just _ask her!”_

Neil tried to put one foot in front of the other to go to the tennis courts, but he found himself completely frozen and turning more nervous by the second.

“Good god, Neil,” Eva said, rolling her eyes once more before grabbing Neil by the upper arm and dragging him towards the courts. He stumbled slightly behind her, yelling some words of protest, but eventually ended up standing right on the tennis courts, and only a few feet away from where Rosalyn was warming up.

“Hey! Rosie!” Eva shouted, waving one of her arms in the air. Rosalyn turned to look at who was yelling her name, and when she saw Eva, began to smile. She set down her tennis racquet and began walking to where Eva and Neil were standing.

“Hey Eva,” Rosalyn said. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much with me,” Eva said, a grin slowly growing over her face. “But I think Neil here has something to ask you.”

Neil felt himself, somehow, turn an even deeper shade of red. “Hah, uh… yeah,” he barely managed to get out.

Rosalyn glanced at him and looked at what he was holding in his hands. “Is that a corsage?” she asked, pointing towards the box.

“...Yep,” Neil said after a moment.

“...Are you asking me out to prom?” Rosalyn said slowly, trying to drag any sort of answer out of Neil.

“...Yep,” Neil repeated again. It was the only word he could seem to get out.

“Oh!” Rosalyn said, starting to smile. “Yeah, okay!”

Neil blinked. “Wait, really?”

“Yeah, sure!” she said, taking the corsage box out of Neil’s hands. “I’ll get your number from Eva after practice and text you when to pick me up and stuff!”

“O-okay,” Neil responded.

“See you then!” Rosalyn said, and then began to walk off back to the court. Neil watched her walk off, still confused and processing what just happened.

“See?” Eva said, lightly patting Neil on the shoulder. “I told you she’d say yes!”

“...Yeah,” Neil said.

“Well, this has been fun,” Eva said, smiling at Neil, “but I actually have to practice. I’ll see you later,” and began walking off to join Rosalyn.

Neil watched her walk off as well. “Yeah, see you,” he answered quietly.

* * *

“Well, that’s about it,” Neil said. “Actual prom was pretty basic. I got dressed up in a rented black tux. She wore a silver dress.”

“I thought it was red?” Eva said.

“Same thing,” Neil said, waving off her comment. “We slow danced a few times. I talked to her about my extensive knowledge of Pokemon. Dropped her off at her house later that night and that was that.”

“Hmm,” Roxie said.

“Was the story just as interesting and beautiful as you thought it would be?” Neil asked sarcastically.

"Something of the sort,” Roxie said before turning to Rob. “Well, what about you? Any fun prom stories?”

“I think he was in high school before prom was even invented,” Neil said.

Rob glared at Neil. "I’m not older than prom, Neil," he said in a low tone, "but no, no prom stories for me. I didn't go."

"What a surprise," Neil said. Rob shot him another look.

"Okay, we need to get back to work," Rob said and began walking to his office.

"Right," Eva said and picked up her briefcase beside her. "Talk to you guys later."

"See ya!" Roxie said as Eva walked to her office. When she shut the door, Roxie turned to look at Neil.

"Interesting story, Neil,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Mhmm. One for the ages."

"You really liked Rosalyn, huh?"

Neil shot her a confused look.

"...Yeah? I guess?" he responded.

"Liked her so much you forgot what color dress she was wearing?"

Neil paused. "I don't feel the need to fill up my memory with whatever color my high school prom date was wearing."

"But why wouldn't you remember?” Roxie pressed. “You liked her a lot-- always looking at her in class. Right next to Eva."

Neil raised an eyebrow.

"Not even mentioning,” Roxie continued, “that you brought a corsage with you in your backpack for her before Eva even convinced you to ask her out."

"I don't like what you're implying."

"I’m not implying anything, obviously. Just a really interesting story."

Neil gave her one last look before starting to walk down the hallway away from her. "I have work to do."

"I’m sure you do, Neil," Roxie said with a knowing smile on her face, before walking down the hallway to return to her own office.


End file.
